Only then, will his victim be able to gain some closure.

Sorry about the late reply, but your question is worth an answer. Which is simple really: the combined policies of the late 1970s and 1980s of both governments here and abroad (notably America) were unashamedly and declaredly about profit making being ‘unfettered’, not even by moral considerations and certainly not by the demands of a community or the local. The agenda was, and continues to be, this but we are less sensitive to it now, and have completely unregulated financial and business activity with profit as the only motive:the thinking was, and is, that the riches and capital thus created would ‘trickle down’ to all sections of society and all would benefit, not just the super rich. Most reputable economists seem to agree that this is sheer bunkum and that such ‘unfettered profiteering’ has actually worsened the gap between the super rich and the desperately poor and also made more people poorer and less people fabulously wealthy. The deregularisation of Sunday trading was just one link in this process of releasing trade from any constraints. There is a useful unpacking of all this in Robert H Frank’s book ‘The Return of the Economic Naturalist’ in which he points out that the idea has been around for a very long time and is basically Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ theory. Barack Obama also rails against the notion in his excellent book: ‘The Audacity of Hope’.

I’d like to see the thoughts behind that assertion.